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Lot essay

Little is known about Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s views or activities during the Revolution. He painted few contemporary events though his portraits of the Enlightenment thinker Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne (1756-1819), an associate of Robespierre during the Terror, indicate an awareness and engagement with the changing intellectual and political currents in late 18th-and early 19th century France. Greuze was, of course, familiar with the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and his concept of moral character being defined in childhood, ideas he introduced into this composition.

The Good Mother displays this Rousseau-inspired idea of family life. In this composition, a peasant mother attempts to feed her child while her other eager child pushes him out of the way. Throughout his career Greuze infused these domestic scenes of peasant life with moral overtones, often conceiving of compositions as pendants contrasting good and bad behavior. In The Good Mother the two children display contrasting characters. Greuze explored similar themes in other drawings such as The Spoiled Child and The Beloved Mother, both in the Albertina, Vienna (see E. Munhall, Greuze the Draftsman, exh. cat., The Frick Collection, New York, 2002, pp. 112-114, no. 33; and pp. 136-137, no. 43). Another drawing from the 1760s which also belonged to de Damery, and which was also engraved by Beauvarlet is entitled The Chestnut Vendor ('La marchande de marrons') and shows a similar range of emotions among the children approaching the vendor (Munhall, op. cit., pp. 68-9, no. 14). All three were probably executed in the 1760s, as was The Good Mother.

Many of Greuze’s drawings, were the basis for engraved compositions which served as a lucrative source of revenue for the artist. The Good Mother was engraved by Jacques Firmin Beauvarlet (1731-1797) (fig. 1). An inscription beneath the composition which alludes to the child’s jealousy reads:

The print also bears the arms of Jean Louis Antoine le Vaillant de Damery, the Chevalier de Damery (1723-1803), an officer in the royal navy and close friend and patron of Greuze who was once the owner of the present drawing. De Damery fell into financial hardship in the latter half of the 18th century and was forced to sell his extensive collection and estate before retiring to the Invalides where he remained until his death. The drawing was subsequently owned by two other esteemed French collectors, the Marquis de Lagoy (1764-1829), and Alfred Beaurdeley (1847-1919).